The Federal Government has again reiterated that cybercafe operators and mobile phone users must keep unique information of all their customers to enable monitoring of their activities.[blockquote right=”pull-right” cite=”NCC”]”Consequently, the Commission directed all operators via its letter dated of 3rd October, 2013, “to henceforth return all fully activated SIM Cards to “receive only” if no commercial activity was carried out on them after 48 hours of activation”, the telecoms regulator said.[/blockquote]
In the case of cyber cafes, which are facilities that people users to access the Internet, the telecoms regulator which reiterated the government directive said that the need for owners of such businesses to keep records of their customers was to check online crimes.
On the other hand, it has also ordered phone companies to disallow unregistered phone users from making calls on their lines to ensure that government has a comprehensive database of phone users in the country.
The Nigeria Communications Commission, the telecoms regulator said that it has issud a directive along this line in continuation of the 2011 exercise flagged off to log all phone users into the government database.
“Consequently, the Commission directed all operators via its letter dated of 3rd October, 2013, “to henceforth return all fully activated SIM Cards to “receive only” if no commercial activity was carried out on them after 48 hours of activation”, the telecoms regulator said.
“The Commission has continued the compliance monitoring and enforcement of the Nigeria Communications Commission (Registration of Telephone Subscribers) Regulations 2011. To this end a Technical Audit was carried out on all (registered SIMs since registration exercised commenced in 2011. This directive was aimed at checkmating the incidences of sale of pre-registered SIM cards in the Nigerian Telecoms industry”, according to a statement issued by the agency.
In a related development, NCC said that it has issued a public notice to all cyber cafe operators in Nigeria “to maintain a clientele database for all their customers in order to check cyber crimes.”
According to NCC, “a mechanism for the monitoring compliance of this directive has been put in place by the Compliance Monitoring and Enforcement Department.”
Home